EU confronts U.S. over reports it spies on European allies

BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Union has demanded that the United States explain a report in a German magazine that Washington is spying on the group, using unusually strong language to confront its closest trading partner over its alleged surveillance activities.

A spokeswoman for the European Commission said on Sunday the EU contacted U.S. authorities in Washington and Brussels about a report in Der Spiegel magazine that the U.S. secret service had tapped EU offices in Washington, Brussels and at the United Nations.

"We have immediately been in contact with the U.S. authorities in Washington D.C. and in Brussels and have confronted them with the press reports," the spokeswoman said.

"They have told us they are checking on the accuracy of the information released yesterday and will come back to us," she said in a statement.

Der Spiegel reported on its website on Saturday that the National Security Agency (NSA) bugged EU offices and gained access to EU internal computer networks, the latest revelation of alleged U.S. spying that has prompted outrage from EU politicians.

The magazine followed up on Sunday with a report that the U.S. secret service taps half a billion phone calls, emails and text messages in Germany in a typical month, much more than any other European peer and similar to the data tapped in China or Iraq.

It also uses data from Internet hubs in south and west Germany that organise data traffic to Syria and Mali.

Revelations about the alleged U.S. spying programme, which became public through documents taken by fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, have raised a furore in the United States and abroad over the balance between privacy rights and national security.

The extent to which Washington's EU allies are being monitored has emerged as an issue of particular concern.

"If the media reports are correct, this brings to memory actions among enemies during the Cold War. It goes beyond any imagination that our friends in the United States view the Europeans as enemies," said German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger.

"If it is true that EU representations in Brussels and Washington were indeed tapped by the American secret service, it can hardly be explained with the argument of fighting terrorism," she said in a statement.

TAPPED GERMANS

Germany's federal prosecutor's office, which has authority in matters of national security, said it was looking into whether or not it should start an investigation. Criminal charges are expected to be filed, spokeswoman Frauke Koehler told Reuters.

Germans are particularly sensitive about government monitoring, having lived through the Stasi secret police in the former communist East Germany and with lingering memories of the Gestapo of Hitler's Nazi regime.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has not commented on the latest report. Ahead of a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama earlier this month, Merkel defended governments' monitoring of Internet communications, however, and said that the U.S. cyber-snooping had helped prevent attacks on German soil.

She stressed during Obama's visit that there were limits to monitoring but stopped short of pressing the issue hard.

Martin Schulz, president of the EU Parliament and also a German, said if the report was correct, it would have a "severe impact" on relations between the EU and the United States.

He told French radio the United States had crossed a line.

"I was always sure that dictatorships, some authoritarian systems, tried to listen ... but that measures like that are now practiced by an ally, by a friend, that is shocking, in the case that it is true," Schulz said in an interview with France 2.

White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes refused to comment during a trip to South Africa, saying only:

"Those are some of our closest intelligence partners, so it's worth noting that the Europeans work very closely with us. We have very close intelligence relationships with them."

Some EU policymakers said talks for a free trade agreement between Washington and the EU should be put on ice until further clarification from the United States.

"Partners do not spy on each other," the European commissioner for justice and fundamental rights, Viviane Reding, said at a public event in Luxembourg on Sunday.

"We cannot negotiate over a big transatlantic market if there is the slightest doubt that our partners are carrying out spying activities on the offices of our negotiators," Reding said in comments passed on to reporters by her spokeswoman.